A "SEA OF HAPPINESS" IS WHAT CUBA DESPERATELY NEEDS

According to a recent piece in the online version of Granma, we are to believe that tomorrow parliamentary elections will be held in Cuba. Our dear leader, Mr. Chavez, has often likened his Bolivarian Revolution to Cuba's history of political transformation under Castro, and proudly said as early in his presidential tenure as December of 1999 that the state of affairs in Cuba was one Venezuelans should look to emulate, praising the island's political class and describing Cuba itself as, "a sea of happiness, social justice, and true peace." (You may enjoy a spanish version of President Chavez' thoughts on Castro's "sea of happiness" during March of 2000 here. In addition, you may watch Mr. Chavez back when he was still a presidential candidate as he calls Cuba's government a dictatorship).

Tomorrow's "elections" are presumably another example of the kind of social justice our president insists he wants to bring us closer to, though there is nothing social or just about how Cuban parliamentarians are chosen. It would be truer to say that tomorrow Cubans will be granted the permission to choose from a list of 614 communist candidates, all of whom have been pre-approved by the Communist Party to run in the first place. No liberal party, or any non-aligned party for that matter, including the Democratic-Social Revolutionary Party of Cuba (whose secretary-general, Jorge Valls, is currently exiled in the United States after having spent over twenty years in a Cuban prison) will be allowed to participate, so there is nothing pluralistic or democratic about these proceedings to begin with. To even call it an election is already to euphemize in a callous and frivolous manner. This so-called vote continues to be what it always has been since Castro's national assembly decided to institute it in the early nineties: a self-aggrandizing and sordid public relations stunt designed to wow the credulous and influence public opinion in the West, as well as lend some credence to the Communist Party's propaganda about what it proudly calls "revolutionary democracy."

By definition the candidates that win these seats cannot in any real sense be called representatives of the people, since, as we know, it has been predetermined in Havana who can and cannot run. The electoral simulacrum that coats this sham in a veneer of legitimacy should never be called a parliamentary election by anyone who, having participated in the real thing, respects what the term actually means. We shouldn't forget that democracy does not just imply the immutable right of citizens to vote. It also includes the natural and self-evident right of any candidate, from any party, to run.